Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share The World's Greatest...

Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share The World's Greatest Destinations | Chris Santella | Join the Crowds

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Fifty Places to Go...

	Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share The World's Greatest Destinations Chris Santella Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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It?s estimated that 50 to 60 million Americans count birding among their hobbies. Some hang feeders in their backyards and accumulate yard lists; others participate in annual ?Christmas Counts?; a select few travel to the ends of the earth in an effort to see every bird in the world. With Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die, Chris Santella takes the best-selling ?Fifty Places? recipe and applies it to this most popular pastime.

Santella presents some of the greatest bird-watching venues in the United States and abroad through interviews with prominent birders, from tour leaders and conservationists to ornithologists and academics. Interviewees include ornithologist Kenn Kaufman; David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of The Sibley Guide to Birds; Rose Ann Rowlett, the ?mother of modern birding?; John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; and Steve McCormick, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

The places vary from the urban (New York City?s Central Park) to the mystical (the cloud forests of Triunfo in Chiapas, Mexico) to the extremely remote (the sub-Arctic islands of New Zealand). The book includes 40 gorgeous photographs that capture the vibrancy of our feathered friends, and the beautiful places they call home.

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Surprisingly worthwhile (with some caveats)

I must admit that I was initially skeptical of this book. The author admits that he is not a birder, and there are inherent issues with these sort of lists.
Even though the author is not an avid birder himself, he is not a complete stranger to the hobby. He was aware that he was not qualified to select the sites himself, so he solicited input from birders and ornithologists. Many of these are professional birders, tour leaders, authors, etc, such as David Sibley and Kenn Kaufman. Each of the 50 places in this book was nominated by someone different.
The second issue is harder to avoid. No list is going to please everyone, and your favorite birding spot may not have made this list. So I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack in this regard. Still, 24 out of the 50 sites are found in the United States. A more concerted effort should have been made to better balance the site selection geographically.
But once you get past these two issues, the book was a pleasure to read. The author does a very good job on the site accounts, and also quotes liberally from the site's selector. The direct quotes are often personal experiences and stories that the recommender has from this place. Most of these are fantastic reading and highly entertaining.
Hard core world travelers won't get much out of this book. But all other birders will be exposed to many different wonderful places, some of which you may have never even heard of before.

Since Amazon doesn't have a Look Inside feature on this book, here is the complete list of 50 places:

United States
Alaska: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Alaska: Gambell
Arizona: Southeast Arizona
Arkansas: Big Woods
California: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
California: Point Reyes National Seashore
California: Sacramento Valley
Florida: St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge
Hawaii: Kauai
Maine: Scarborough Marsh
Massachusetts: Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge
New Jersey: Cape May
New Mexico: Bosque del Apache
New York: Central Park
New York: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge
North Carolina/Tennessee: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
North Dakota: Prairie Potholes
Ohio: Lake Erie
Oregon: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
Pennsylvania: Hawk Mountain Refuge
Texas: High Island to Galveston
Texas: Lower Rio Grande Valley
Wisconsin: Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
Wyoming: Yellowstone National Park

North America
Greenland: Thule

Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean
Belize: The Ruins
Costa Rica: San Gerardo de Dota
Guatemala: The Highlands
Jamaica: Blue Mountains and Beyond
Mexico: El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve
Trinidad and Tobago: Caroni Lagoon

South America
Brazil/Peru: Amazonia
Ecuador: Podocarpus National Park
Ecuador: Tandayapa-Mindo
United Kingdom: South Georgia Island
Venezuela: The Llanos

Europe
England: Cley Next the Sea
Hungary: Hortobagy National Park
Iceland: Jokulsargljufur National Park
Spain: Tarifa

Asia
Kingdom of Bhutan
Borneo: Danum Valley
India: the Andamans
Papua New Guinea: Tari Valley
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: The Silk Road

Africa
Madagascar: Masoala Peninsula
Tanzania: Serengeti National Park

Australia/New Zealand
Australia: Bruny Island
Australia: Capertee Valley
New Zealand: Sub-Antarctic Islands

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Join the Crowds

This type of collection has appeared for numberous sports and hobbies.
It provides a tick off list of places to go that many like-minded people will suddenly want to visit. One text, "Fifty Classic ______" has since been dubbed "Fifty Crowded ______".

Inevitably, the experience of visiting those places will be changed by the increased number of people who want to visit them due to this book. Whether this is a drawback for you or not will depend on whether you enjoy socializing more or less than actually birding and whether you can afford the increased pricing that usually follows increased demand. The crowds will help the birds in some ways (proving the economic value of environmental protection via ecotourism) and hinder them in others (inevitable habitat degradation and some disruption of natural behavior due to increased numbers of people).

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